Discussions

Hey, I'm wondering how to overcome this challenge we're experiencing with clients.

Scenario:

The user begins chatting with the interactive avatar, then pauses for a few seconds to think. But before they can finish, the avatar jumps in and "interrupts" the user.

Example dialogue:

• Avatar: Hey how you doing?
• User: Let me think about that.... (Pause for a few seconds)
• Avatar: Ok, take your time.
• User: No, give me a few seconds to think.....
• Avatar: Understood, take your time.

What I really want is for the user to have a longer period of time to think without the avatar butting in. I'm finding this is especially important when users are thinking about hard answers to hard questions. Or they are non-native English speakers, and they take slightly longer to translate in their heads before responding.

Solution:

One idea I had is to introduce "manual" turn-taking. Where the user pushes a button "I'm finished", and only then is the message sent to the avatar.

I've been trying to control the USER_END_MESSAGE, to only send once user pushes button. But it appears this event is actually fired "AFTER" the message is sent to avatar maybe?

I see some other stuff in the SDK, like using SilencePrompt, but it's really unclear what this actually does.

TLDR:

What is your recommendation to enable users to take longer pauses in conversations, without the avatar assuming they have finished, and the user feeling like they have been "interrupted" ?